Individuals and organizations typically seek to protect their private data using a variety of data protection mechanisms. One traditional method for protecting an enterprise organization's data corresponds to taking a “snapshot” of that data. In general, a “snapshot” may refer to any one of several different mechanisms for storing data that preserve the exact content of the data at a specific point in time.
Additionally, as the size of an enterprise organization's data grows, the organization may attempt to address storage space concerns in a variety of ways. For example, the organization may increase physical capacity or implement a form of data compression. In a more specific example, the organization may implement a deduplication system that effectively compresses data by reducing redundant copies of repeated data segments, as discussed further below. Nevertheless, traditional systems for taking snapshots in deduplicated data systems have proven to be non-optimal along a number of dimensions. Specifically, traditional systems may be unduly slow, may degrade in performance as the frequency of taking snapshots increases, and may render snapshots dependent on each other such that modifying or deleting one snapshot needlessly impacts another snapshot. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for taking snapshots in a deduplicated virtual file system.